The biggest betrayal of Ukraine is yet to come

By Pete North - July 28, 2023

There are days when I wonder why either of us bother with blogging. It’s a big financial and personal sacrifice to be this deeply engaged with politics – to the exclusion of other more rewarding things. But I’m glad we do it. We have a pretty comprehensive record of events for going on twenty years, including musings from the late Helen Szamuely. It’s also a record of the rise and fall of political blogging. There was a sweet spot when blogs hunted in packs and impacted the national conversation. Since then we’ve had to get used to waning influence, while blogs have now given way to Twitter.

The benefit of having a private blog, however, is that no perpetually offended blue-haired social justice warrior can remove it, and it remains our property no matter who we might offend. And it’s certainly worth something to me. Though we have left the EU, we are still of Europe – and to know where it’s going it helps to know how it all came about. This is especially important now because the future of Europe hasn’t looked so uncertain for a long long time. Ukraine has become a turning point in history.

With that in mind, I’ve taken in upon myself to refresh my memory of events leading up to where we find ourselves today. Eureferendum.com, and the links in the posts, have proven a useful resource.

Much of debate was and is heavily American-centric, exploring the role of NATO expansionism in provoking Russia. In the US narrative, the EU’s role is often discounted. But we should recall that the EU was busy antagonising Russia on all sides – in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, in pursuit of its neighbourhood policy. As we remarked at the time, the Euro-maidan coup was not over a mere “trade deal”, rather it was over an EU association agreement, which was widely believed to be a stepping stone to EU accession – against a backdrop of EU expansionist rhetoric, including from our very own David Cameron – in what can easily be considered a provocation of Russia.

There was no way this wasn’t going to set alarm bells ringing both in the Kremlin and parts of Ukraine. In a post-Brexit context it becomes all the more clearer, when we know from our dealings over Northern Ireland that a land border entails customs and regulatory formalities that drive a wedge through political sensitivities. We’ve had endless stern lectures why it shouldn’t be done in Ireland, but nobody asked whether we should put such a border in Eastern Europe.

The subsequent trade bidding war is what made Viktor Yanukovych change his mind. The EU wasn’t offering much in the way of economic assistance or compensation of loss of Russian trade, and the EU offer came with a lot of strings attached. Russia, on other other hand, was offering cheap energy and a very large bailout. Ukraine stopped short of joining the Russian customs union, and it would appear that the Yanukovych strategy was to play both sides against the middle. Yanukovych was looking for a three way solution, recognising Russian sensitivities over the matter. Accused of being a Russian stooge at the time by Western commentators, it would be fairer to say he recognised the dangers.

In our dealings with Georgia and Moldova, their respective association agreements contained provisions on conflict prevention, in recognition that both countries had separatist regions. The agreements mentioned that trade and trade-related matters would only apply to the respective separatist regions once Georgian and Moldovan authorities could ensure full enforcement. But it was assumed Ukraine had no separatist regions, and the Ukraine agreement was later interpreted as applying to Crimea despite it being, de facto, under Russian control – exacerbating frictions. Russia repeatedly voiced concerns over what it saw as an expansion of the EU’s sphere of influence at the expense of its own. From there, the war took on a certain inevitability.

Several commentators have remarked how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is counter-productive in that it makes Ukrainian accession into the EU and NATO inevitable. But in truth, EU membership was never on the cards before, and part of the reason Yanukovych cancelled the association agreement was that there was no firm offer to put Ukraine on a path to EU membership. There are many and complex reasons why that wasn’t the case – and they still exist.

Today, though, Ukraine’s prospects of membership look even slimmer. For starters, the war has to end. There is then a political reckoning to be had. Zelensky has made many international (fair weather) friends but also a great many internal enemies. There’s a lot of politics in stasis that will need to be resolved on the other side. And it won’t be pretty.

Meanwhile, externally, we’re already seeing some of the friction yet to come with Poland’s unilateral ban on Ukranian grain. Five members in total have pushed the EU to extend the grain ban. A foreignpolicy.com article by Max Bergmann sets out some of the further challenges.

if EU leaders were really serious about membership for Ukraine, efforts to reform the bloc should already be underway. At the heart of the issue is the EU budget, which is dominated by two major elements: agricultural subsidies and development projects in poorer regions, which combined account for roughly 65 percent of the EU’s long-term budget. For both these issues, prospective Ukrainian membership is explosive. Ukraine is one of the poorest countries in Europe, with a per capita income of barely one-tenth of the EU average and less than half that of the EU’s poorest member, Bulgaria. Ukraine also now has vast infrastructure and reconstruction needs. To all of this, add one of the continent’s largest agricultural sectors that would suddenly be eligible for EU subsidies.

Were the EU’s budget and redistribution process to remain unchanged, Kyiv would immediately suck in a vast part of the EU budget, including funds now going to the bloc’s less affluent members in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. Many countries currently benefiting from EU funds would turn into net contributors overnight. If you think any of this will be a smooth process, then you don’t know much about European politics.

Given the current redistribution of funds within the EU, it’s no surprise that the biggest cracks in support for Ukrainian membership have come in Eastern Europe, where the EU’s net recipients are concentrated. In fact, the battle over giving Ukraine access to European agricultural markets has already started, long before a single euro in EU farming subsidies is reallocated: Following the invasion, Brussels supported Ukraine by allowing its grain and other agricultural products to enter the EU’s single market. Cheaper Ukrainian goods undercut farmers in neighboring Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia. Even though Ukraine was desperate for revenue, Poland violated EU rules and unilaterally blocked Ukrainian grain from entering Polish territory. The EU intervened with a compromise, allowing Ukrainian produce to enter the EU but requiring it to bypass five Eastern European countries most affected by the unwelcome competition.

It is also no surprise, then, that some of these Eastern European countries—which count among Ukraine’s biggest military and diplomatic backers—also oppose any serious effort to undertake the EU reforms that are a prerequisite for Ukraine to join. Not only do these countries potentially stand to lose substantial funds, but EU reforms to prepare the way for Ukrainian membership will also likely include streamlining EU decision-making rules, which could reduce individual members’ power, especially countries such as Hungary and Poland that have made liberal use of their veto power to influence EU decisions.

Economic and political conditions for the bloc are challenging enough, particularly now that Britain is no longer a contributor to EU coffers. Reform will prove difficult with so many conflicts of interest within the EU at a time when Eastern European solidarity is frayed. Add budgetary pressures, the rise of the populist right, inflation and energy costs, and those reforms may be impossible.

By the end of this, even if Ukraine is successful in repelling the Russian invaders, Ukraine may find itself in the same geopolitical position – between a rock and a hard place, only with most of its critical infrastructure destroyed, relying on highly conditional handouts – with neither EU nor NATO membership on the cards.

Worse still, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have both called for a “Marshall Plan” for Ukraine underpinned by the principles of the EU’s Green Deal. That means a rapid move away from fossil fuels. The city built “solely to produce coal” is to be completely replanned around renewable energy generation and other “sustainable economic activities”. The very last thing Ukraine needs is more of Europe’s narcissistic delusions.

The EU, having provoked Russia, leading Ukraine down the garden path, while totally insincere about EU accession, won’t take responsibility, and Ukraine will be left broken and humiliated. As I argued early on, a negotiated settlement may have prevented Ukraine’s destruction and made it easier to pivot away from Russia, but instead Ukraine will be cut off from Russia and left in limbo by the West – perhaps even leading to civil war, providing Putin with a chance to try again. For a political entity that sees its primary role as the promotion of peace, the EU’s crowning achievement of the century will have be been to wreck Ukraine to the extent that it may never recover, risking WW3 in the process. With friends like that, who needs enemies?